Running tended to help Emma clear her head. She could work out problems as her feet hit the ground. She liked to coordinate the difficulty of her runs with the difficulty of her problems.
On Saturday, she ran at Griffith Park.
She ran up. West Observatory Trail. From the start to the observatory was only about a mile, but the elevation change had her breathing hard early. Her feet sent up clouds of dust with every stride.
She wasn’t worried about the accidental kiss. No. That was going to be fine. She’d decided. And if she believed enough, it had to be true.
The problem she was working out instead was what she wanted to do.
Which—
She knew what she wanted to do.
Or did she? How could she be sure? What if she started on the path she thought she wanted, only to be wrong? She liked her job now. It was good. Interesting. She was good at it. She didn’t quite see why she couldn’t stay on as Jo’s assistant when Jo moved to Agent Silver. Maybe not forever, or anything, but at least for another year or two. She was still getting her footing. By her third year as props PA, she had everything figured out forward, backward, and sideways. Why couldn’t she do the same thing as Jo’s assistant?
Because she knew what she wanted to do.
She should have gotten out here earlier, before the tourists and the sun. Only April, but it was hot enough for sweat to drip down her forehead and pool at the base of her back.
Even if she was right about where she wanted to end up, she didn’t know how to get there. The path she expected to take didn’t work; she’d dropped out of film school. Maybe that had been a bad time in her life or maybe she just wasn’t good enough. Regardless, there wasn’t any sort of map plotted out for her now. Not any particular next step. Emma latched onto the metaphor as she ran. She could make a misstep, lose her footing, roll her ankle. She could get a cramp halfway through and have to pull up. Or worse, she could not have it in her. She worried about that most as she pushed herself up the incline. She already failed once. What if she got another chance and still couldn’t do it? What if she never made it to the top? She could get lost somewhere in the middle. Veer off the poorly marked path.
She was almost to the observatory on top of the hill. The water in her CamelBak was cool and refreshing. She wished she could pour it over her face. Hopefully she wasn’t sweating her sunscreen off. She kept going.
Tourists crowded the observatory parking lot. Cars packed in side by side while others circled like they were going to somehow get lucky and find an empty spot. Emma walked, hands on her hips, letting herself catch her breath. She tried to avoid interrupting anyone’s photos—of the city, the Hollywood Sign, each other.
She found a spot without people in it and stopped to stretch a little.
The Hollywood Sign sat on the hillside in front of her.
“I want to be a director.”
She hadn’t said it out loud since she left film school. Had barely even let herself think it.
It was terrifying.
None of the problems she considered on her way up were solved. Nothing was for certain. She could be wrong, could get stuck, could not have enough to get there.
But she knew what she wanted to do.
* * *
—
On Monday, Emma arrived at the restaurant for lunch before Jo did. No matter how many times over the weekend she had told herself everything was going to be fine, her whole body felt like a coiled spring, like a bolt screwed in too tight. She squeezed her purse against her side and took a step up the sidewalk away from the restaurant when a black car pulled up to the curb.
Emma pressed her lips together as Jo got out. She was still considering fleeing.
Then Jo smiled in greeting. Her regular, happy-to-see-you, not-at-all-stressed smile, and Emma felt like she could breathe again.
“Good to see you survived your hangover,” Jo teased gently.
Emma grimaced. Apparently they were going to address the kiss—the accidental kiss—right off the bat.
But instead, Jo said, “Let’s get a table. I’m starving.”
Okay then. One problem down. Or ignored, anyway. Emma didn’t care about the specifics. Now she just had to get through the career talk.
She might have spoken her dream out loud to herself, but she stayed quiet as they were led to an outdoor table. And as they ordered, and as the waiter brought her a lemonade and Jo a sparkling water. Jo talked sparingly, about the wrap party, about how work in the summer would be easier on them.
She let Emma be quiet until their food arrived, and then she said, “So what do you want to do?”
Emma had ordered a steak salad. She stuffed a hunk of meat in her mouth instead of answering. “Hmm?”
Jo smiled. “I need to know what kind of recommendation letter I should write you.” She stabbed a bite of her Caesar salad. “What job do you want next?”
Emma wanted to direct.
But that was too scary to say out loud. It was a big dream. There were too many ways to fail.
Emma shrugged, noncommittal.
“You’re too good for this, Emma. Too smart.”
Emma didn’t like that, Jo making it seem like her job wasn’t important enough.
“I like my job, Ms. Jones,” she said.
“Ms. Kaplan.” Jo’s voice snapped around the K. “I’m not letting you stagnate as my assistant. It’s nonnegotiable.”
Emma felt like she was failing a test. She knew what she wanted to do, long-term, didn’t she? But she didn’t know how to get there.
“My sister always knew she wanted to have her own bakery,” she said. “She got an Easy-Bake oven as a kid but graduated pretty quickly to the regular one. She’s always been really good at it and has always known it was what she wanted to do.”
Jo probably thought this was a weird segue, but it made sense. It was the only way Emma knew to describe it. Jo wasn’t interrupting, though. She looked interested in learning more.
“I wanted something like that,” Emma said. “I still want it. To be that sure of something. To know what I want to do and know I’m going to be successful at it. I wish I could tell you exactly what I want to do next. Wish I knew my path the way Avery always has.”
Emma paused. She wanted Jo to say something, to fill in the silence, but Jo just kept looking at her, eyes open and kind, forcing Emma to work this out herself.
“I like my job,” Emma said. “This job. And I’m good at it. What if I’m not good at whatever I move on to? What if I don’t like it?”
“If you don’t like it, you’ll do something else,” Jo said. “If you’re not good at it, you’ll learn. You’re brilliant, Emma. You hit the ground running in this job, picked everything up easily.”
Jo sounded so certain. Emma wished she could believe her. She took another bite of her salad. She wished she could trust herself.
“Things I think I’m sure of, I can still mess up,” she said. “I was certain putting together that article about how great you’d be for Agent Silver was going to be a good thing. And it was awful!”
Jo didn’t disagree because she couldn’t. Emma was right about that.
“So who’s to say I’m not just as wrong about this?”
“You can’t get anywhere without risk, Emma.”
Right. Emma knew that. It didn’t make it any less terrifying. She stared at her lemonade. The melting ice shifted in the glass.
“I dropped out of film school, you know?” she said.
“I do.” Jo’s voice was quiet.
“I was—it was dumb.” Emma ran her finger along the condensation on the outside of her glass. “I tell people I flunked out, like it wasn’t a choice, but I dropped out. It was hard, and I wasn’t very good, and so I gave up.”
“You were young, were you not?”
Emma tried to look at Jo, didn’t quite make it to her face, focusing instead on the wide neck of her top, the line of her collarbone. Finally, she took a breath, brought her eyes to Jo’s.
“I want to direct.”
A slow smile spread across Jo’s face. Emma felt it, warm in her chest.
“You want to direct,” Jo said.
Emma fought the desire to break eye contact, to take her statement back.
“I do.”
“Okay.” Jo went into business mode. “I wouldn’t think you have the credits for the Directors Guild yet, do you?”
Emma shook her head. “I’m close.”
“So you’ll keep working with me, keep working with Innocents.” Jo’s eyes darted around as she brainstormed. “We could make you an associate producer—yes. Midseason I’ll probably be moving to Agent Silver. You’ll move to associate producer then, finishing up your days so you can join the guild. Before the move, you’ll interview and find your replacement as my assistant. What do you think?”
She thought it sounded great, and she told Jo as much. Jo grinned at her.
This meant Emma got to stay with a show she loved, with a cast and crew she adored. And she’d have the days to join the Directors Guild by the end of the season so she could start working her way up. There was a slight pang at the thought of Jo moving on without her, but otherwise, associate producer was the best of both worlds: She was taking a step forward in her career without moving too far out of her comfort zone.
“You really think I can do it?” Emma had to ask.
Jo caught her hand on top of the table and squeezed it. “I think you can do anything, Emma.”
* * *
—
After lunch, Emma headed to Avery’s. Her week off coincided perfectly with Passover. Emma always tried to go home for it, but sometimes her schedule was too busy. This year, she piled Cassius, Rosalind, and Billie into her car. Avery and her husband, Dylan, had their car loaded with their ten-year-old twins. Emma avoided any significant looks Avery sent her way as they packed the cars.
It had been days since the wrap party, but staying up so late and drinking so much took a toll Emma was still recovering from. She refused to admit it may have been related to an emotional conversation at lunch. Her throat was a little scratchy from how loud she sang along to Gina’s karaoke of Brandi Carlile. She resorted to a large iced chai as she followed her sister’s family up the coast.
Their parents still lived in the house where Emma and Avery grew up. Emma was grateful for it, grateful it was only a few hours’ drive before she could bask in the comforts and nostalgia of home. Their parents were waiting on the front porch when they arrived, and were greeted first by the dogs barreling up to say hello.
There was a lot of hugging then, and Emma enjoyed the warm strength of her father’s arms around her for all of two seconds before:
“You didn’t bring your girlfriend?”
“Really?” Emma groaned. “I can’t even make it through the door before you do this?”
* * *
—
They spent the evening on the porch, catching up and gorging themselves on some of Avery’s cupcakes before sundown, when Passover officially started. Ezra and Danielle, the twins, chased fireflies through the yard. No one stopped teasing Emma about Jo.
“You know the internet said she looked sad because you weren’t at those awards with her,” her mom said.
Emma remembered her drunken conversation with Jo and tried not to blush. “The internet says a lot of things, Mom.”
Really, she and Jo had expected the GLAADs would calm the rumors down. Jo went by herself. People were supposed to realize Emma joining her was a fluke. Instead, everyone decided Jo was depressed either that Emma didn’t join her or because they’d broken up.
Jo did look sad, though; no one had been wrong about that. Emma didn’t like it. Jo’s smile was strained and made Emma think about why Jo had taken her to the SAGs, as a buffer of sorts. It would’ve been worth the rumors, Emma thought, to go to the GLAADs with Jo for the same purpose. The rumors felt like a part of life now, neither bad nor good, just there. Even the photographers who had found her apartment weren’t terrible. She hadn’t told Jo about them, didn’t think Jo needed to be bothered. They weren’t usually there, but they were the morning after the GLAADs. Emma had held her head high and pretended she didn’t see them.
“I like seeing my daughter in the news for dating a woman,” her mom continued. “There are much worse reasons to be famous.”
“I’m not famous,” Emma said.
“It was my turn to host book club last month,” her dad said. “They all wanted to talk about you instead of about Station Eleven.”
Her dad’s book club was all men over sixty. Emma didn’t realize that so many people cared about the rumors.
“Did you tell them we aren’t really dating?”
“Well,” her father started, and already she rolled her eyes. “I told them you claim not to be interested in her?”
“Dad!”
“She’s beautiful and famous, honey,” he said. “All the guys agreed you should go for it.”
“There’s nothing to go for!”
Emma looked to Avery and Dylan for backup here, but they smirked at her.
“No one in this family loves me at all,” Emma whined and the others laughed.
* * *
—
The rest of her time at home went much the same. They had a seder with two other couples from their hometown temple, and even then, there was too much talk about Emma and Jo.
After the meal, alone in her childhood bedroom, Emma unlocked her phone. She opened her text thread with Jo. She wanted to tell her how ridiculous this all had been. She wanted to tell her about a group of sixtysomething guys deciding she and Jo were a cute couple. Jo would laugh, Emma thought.
But she’d never texted her boss about anything not work related. Not as the start of a conversation. Sometimes their texts ended up about something other than work, but they always began about it. Even though the rumors seemed work related, a little, Emma didn’t type a message. She wasn’t about to change the way their relationship worked after they had accidentally kissed. She couldn’t do anything that would make Jo think she’d meant to do it. Plus, Jo was her boss, not her friend. And she wasn’t even going to be her boss for long. Jo was pushing her out of the nest. Emma locked her phone and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling.
6
EMMA
Upfronts were when networks tried to woo advertisers. They were basically a dog and pony show—networks did anything they could to promote their shows for a week in New York. Last year, upfronts had been terrifying. Emma had just started as Jo’s assistant and had no idea what she was doing. But now, rather than bumbling around trying to stay afloat, she’d be able to learn about the production side of things from Jo, learn what it took to win advertisers over. Outside of work, Emma planned to sneak away when she could, walk the city, eat delicious food, go to a museum or two. It would be an exhausting trip, but she couldn’t wait.
This year, their network was parading Jo and the stars—Tate, Gina, and Holly—around. The main event for Innocents was a panel with Jo and the other three where they would discuss what they could of the next season without giving away spoilers. Emma knew Jo hadn’t written much of the next season yet. She’d been focusing on Agent Silver instead, taking a break from Innocents after the finale.
Emma and Jo worked seamlessly together, prepping for the panel. It was quiet, calmer with everyone else on break for summer hiatus. Emma quizzed Jo on the prepared answers to panel questions that the network sent. Jo peppered her answers with sarcasm and curse words the network definitely wasn’t going to approve. Emma tried to be stern but always ended up laughing.
Jo dressed more casu
ally, flowing maxi skirts and sometimes even a graphic tee. The atmosphere between them felt more casual, too. More than once when other people were still around, Emma had noticed Jo go to do something—put a hand on her shoulder or lead her by an elbow or something—before freezing. Jo always followed through with the motion, but it was obvious—at least to Emma—that Jo was considering how other people might see their interactions. It was nice to be away from that, to just be the two of them, grinning in Jo’s office.
* * *
—
Emma’s asthma started acting up on the flight. It was nothing severe, but she could tell. She couldn’t breathe as deeply as usual. She’d keep an eye on it, up her meds if she needed to. She wasn’t worried—her asthma was mild, and she’d dealt with it long enough to figure out how to work with it. Her lungs would be more sensitive than usual, but it shouldn’t be a problem. She didn’t mention it to Jo.
“Don’t hesitate to ask me anything throughout the week,” Jo said on the plane. “What questions do you have?”
“I’m sure they’ll come up,” Emma said. “I’ll ask them when they do.”
“But you have none right now?” Jo looked desperate for Emma to ask her something.
“Do you want to go over the schedule again, Jo?” Emma asked gently. “If you need to distract yourself?”
“I’m not distracting myself,” Jo muttered.
She was, though. Which was why Emma didn’t say anything about her asthma. The rumors were making Jo more nervous than usual—Emma assumed that was what it was, anyway. She’d listened in on that call with the network; any drop in advertising, and they’d blame it on Jo’s refusal to deny that she was sleeping with her assistant. Advertisers were probably already wary about Jo leaving for Agent Silver and what effect that would have on Innocents.
Something to Talk About Page 8
